Author
Topic: Xenoblade

Robbie,I haven't beaten the game yet so I cant be sure, but I think you may have accidentally put a spoiler in the "Bottom Line" blurb on your review.

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Talking about the "Bionis is was just sleeping part", cant remember weather its stated at the begining or not, but I was under the impression that it was implied that they ware both dead, could be wrong though, after 20 hours its hard to remember these things.

I truncated it just in case waiting for Rob to weigh in (since I know he's at work right now).

He does mention it once or twice in his text but I assume its probably nothing major, especially since he seems take care not to give too much away and does a good job of avoiding any other possible spoilers in the review.

It might be, I already mentioned I'm pushing through the story at a snails pace. As I wrote above, it seems to be the only instance I found in the whole review that could be a possible spoiler.

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As far as early spoilers go, you managed to dodge the biggest one quite nicely. In fact, the picture RPGFan uses for the Xenoblade reviews had me thinking that Fiora would stick around much, much longer. Caught me completely off guard. Though I have a strange feeling I might see her again before the game is over

They played the card well. The game serves you with the likeable yet stereotypical childhood friend love interest, then smacks you over the head. Should have known something was up when it turned out she wasn't a healer :) .

Robbie,I haven't beaten the game yet so I cant be sure, but I think you may have accidentally put a spoiler in the "Bottom Line" blurb on your review.

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Talking about the "Bionis is was just sleeping part", cant remember weather its stated at the begining or not, but I was under the impression that it was implied that they ware both dead, could be wrong though, after 20 hours its hard to remember these things.

Stated literally within the first 5 minutes, so it's not really a spoiler.

Have to say I'm a little bit surprised at only 80% being awarded for sound in the review here, with no mention of why in the body of the review itself, nor any discussion of the sound full stop (that I can see from skim-reading it in the library. Excuse me if I missed something). Music is highly subjective, but for me the game has easily the strongest RPG soundtrack in years, and one of my favourites ever. And while I can't comment on the English voice acting being that I played the game in Japanese, that sounds pretty good from clips too. Why only 80, out of curiosity?

Also, I think it's really, really harsh to slate the graphics because they don't compare to those of Skyrim or Oblivion. Xenoblade does some unbelievable things with the Wii's hardware, and while its models are relatively low tech, its environments alone make it one of the best-looking games available on the console. You wouldn't criticise a DS or PSP game for not having PS3 caliber graphics, so why should this be any different? Not that RPGFan's review is unique in this criticism, mind, but it's one that sort of baffles me whenever it comes up.

Other than that, absolutely agreed with the review. Really glad to see people enjoying the game as much as I did!

The environments have some pretty low-res textures to them, actually, and as Robert mentioned, they do a lot of tricks to make the graphics seem better than they are. There are plenty of games on the Wii that look better than Xenoblade Chronicles, IMO, especially games from Nintendo. Yes, the environments are big but the graphics took a hit for it. I do like the art style, though.

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The environments have some pretty low-res textures to them, actually, and as Robert mentioned, they do a lot of tricks to make the graphics seem better than they are. There are plenty of games on the Wii that look better than Xenoblade Chronicles, IMO, especially games from Nintendo. Yes, the environments are big but the graphics took a hit for it. I do like the art style, though.

Graphics are much more than just polygon counts and texture quality, though, and the scope and the design of the areas should be part of that score. For me, a couple of muddy textures and some not particularly brilliant faces (neither of which are hugely below par for the Wii anyway) aren't enough to drag the score down to 75%, which is generally below average for the reviews here. I suppose maybe it's just a case of different things being important to different people? I found myself barely caring about the faces and the textures, as I was too busy being wowed at just how beautifully designed the environments were. There isn't a single game on the Wii that has had a bigger impact on me visually than Xenoblade. And to me, that's worthy of a great deal of praise.

In any case, I stand by my criticism that Oblivion and Skyrim are not valid comparisons, and that Xenoblade's visuals being inferior to games like that is not a very fair reason to mark it down. You'd be as well criticising Crisis Core for not looking as good as Final Fantasy XIII. Again, it's not a criticism that's unique to RPGFan's review by any means, but it's one that I really take issue with.

I don't think the graphics are bad at all. The only thing that stands out are the faces, which by today's standards aren't up to par.

And the head shape.... someone on the dev team clearly doesn't know how a human head is shaped.Something about the eyes... somewhere between the fact they're absolutely gigantic when everything else is relatively proportional bothers me. That, and they're seriously muddy looking, and have no shame in close-up shots. >_o

But yeah, those environments, even if it is some clever graphics trick, or being lost in a combination or loveryly music.... but the game certainly takes more liberties in "atmosphere" then most in recent years. Keyword here...Gestalt: the whole is better than the sum of it's parts.